I went to the doctor the other day. While it wasn’t a great visit, still have some pending things and need to see him back in 3 months, I did find out we have decent insurance now that covers birth control pills! yay! Five bucks for the generic brand, same stuff I was on prior to stopping while on the other insurance that cost me $31. So yay!

This is a big deal asside from the stopping pregnancy stuff. My cycle has been increasing in length since I stopped. This causes me major issues in daily life - hair loss, breakouts all caused by hormone imbalances. Though these things can be caused a thyroid problem too which the doctor wants me to have some tests done.

I might also have anemia. He has prescribed iron tablets and I have blood work to do for that too. They took a pin prick of blood in the office but he said that isn’t always accurate so he wants to do a full test on that. So Friday I plan on doing that, I may have to do it with the girls instead of going by myself it depends on if Shea works or not. We’ll see on Friday.

Now it’s a waiting game.

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I have been meaning to post this for several days, but I keep forgetting or running out of time.

This past weekend Shea and I were sitting in the office playing Warhammer, and Kathleen comes in saying “Oh my god, I’m losing my juices.” You see, she has this bug bite and not matter what I do she keeps picking at the scab and it keeps bleeding. Thus she was losing her juices. But it’s not that she thinks that blood is juice, but the kind of koolaide we have in the house is almost always red, and she calls that juice. I laughed for nearly 20 minuites about it. Her exclamation of it. She is a trip most days (when she’s not making me mad lol).

We had an excellent night last night. Samantha went to bed at 8:30ish and Kathleen shortly there after as she was watching Mickey Mouse. Shea and I were able to get into bed by 9:30ish when he turned the tv off in the bedroom. Both girls slept well. Kathleen woke up at 3:30 and I gave her bottle and turned Mickey back on. I checked on Samantha at 4am after I made Shea’s lunch - changed her and gave her a bottle. Kathleen and I went back to bed and no one was out of bed until 9am. Wow! such a late morning. But I needed it badly. Sick and headaches don’t mesh well. Too bad I still have a headache, don’t think it’s a migraine, two days of dull ache and then later in the evening stabbing pain. Probably has to do alot with lack of sleep the past few days. Hopefully things will get back to normal soon. Though it’s freezing now and I doubt that is going to help things either.

Wow I just read a post from last year. I’ve been taking Imatrix for over a year now, it’s amazing. I’ve renewed my prescription for it twice since I started taking it for my bad headaches. So that’s 20 pills. Usually I take two pills in two consecutive days, so that’s about 10 headaches in the past year, give or take a few. I generally only get one every 5 or 6 weeks, and usually have it for two days.

I have very little headaches now but when I get them they are pretty major. I can deal with that instead of a constant ache and then it just builds up to a bursting point. Now it’s just once every couple of weeks for two days instead of weeks on end.

I haven’t been this headache free for almost as long as I can remember.

I finished the Girls Christmas present shopping. I’m still working on a list for other people and for what I get to spend from my parents. I know what my Grandma is getting them, but with out the money I won’t order it.

This last Friday Shea and I set up the swing set that we bought them LAST Christmas. It was missing one washer and nut, but Shea thinks he can get it at work so that should be fine, it’s to one of the slide ladder steps. It works for now so that’s good.

Today I took them outside, let them run around and play, then we came in for lunch and a bath, and now they are both taking a nap. For Sammi that’s not unusual for Kitkat it is.

My goal is to take then out every morning before nap time and let them burn energy and maybe again in the afternoon if its not too hot. I am thankful we have good weather 90% of the time and they can play outside alot even in the middle of the winter.

Is it too early to finish my Christmas shopping. The girls aren’t old enough to write Santa yet, and I’m really not sure that the whole list thing is necessarily a good idea. Considering I’m seriously thinking that Santa is only going to bring stockings for Christmas, the food, candy, little items that come in the stocking etc. And let all the real stuff come from us. I think it would ease the whole learning about Santa thing. But I dunno. They really don’t care yet, but traditions need to start somewhere.

What I’m getting for the girls is all mapped out, it’s all in stock online and I have the money right now to finish my Christmas shopping. Yesterday I took the girls to Walmart for the sole purpose of watching their reactions down the toy aisle. And my guesses were naturally right. Kathleen adored the Disney Car items and the Princess/Mermaid/Tinkerbell stuff. And they both liked the toys with buttons on them lol but that’s typical for them.

They aren’t getting alot of toys for Christmas. Two sets from us and a few sets from my parents. From their aunts and uncles I don’t know but I’m pretty sure that Shea’s folks will go with the suggestions and possibly a few other things of their own choices. I’m anal when it comes to Christmas, I have a list with links for almost all things that are on the kids wish list (mostly things that I think they would like or that they need for upcoming redecoration of their rooms.) But not sure they’ll get them, I gave a list first year and no one really followed it lol, so we’ll see.

But I’m ready to be done. The only things I’ve not done are decide upon little Shea and Sydney, my parents, Shea’s parents and us. I’m pretty much trying to allocate the money my parents give us and Grams T to buy Shea a new camera lens for his film camera. But I still have all that money to decide what I want to do with it. It would have been nice to buy a new wardrobe with it, but I’m not at my target weight yet. Still have about ten pounds to lose, but I feel good about myself again. So I’m happy with where I’m at even though the scale says differently. Either that or I might buy me an external hard drive or a new video card (but we’ll see how the gift video card does for me when Richi has time to install it for me).

Over the past few weeks I have been increasing my portfolio. I have one return customer with three projects they want done and one new one who wants to have a winter project. So there is extra cash flowing in. And I get to increase my portfolio.

I’m putting more effort into my website for AliKat Designs. I want to start blogging about design more regularly. Like maybe once or twice a week. But this takes research for me, as I don’t think I have a lot to say that hasn’t already been said. I think I may start doing some free wordpress themes, or various other themes for third party software that I use. Like mybb, phpbb, wordpress, and zen cart once I figure that out. And start learning about wordpress plugins and various other things that can enhance and pull people to my site and to my business.

With this money I think I’m going to split it between Christmas and saving for the C# class I want to take so that I can finally get that done. I’m debating on whether or not to put the money I get from my parents and my grandma towards this class or buying a Wii for fitness reasons. My parents are using Wii fit and like it. I think that would be something very good to try for both myself and Shea and also have some added benefit of playing console games too (like Zelda).

We’ll see I’m still setting up shopping lists and the like.

Since moving Kitkat to her own room in the playroom with the tv we’ve had a few rough nights, but in the over all scheme of things we are doing great. Shea and I sleep alone most nights, we have a few bumps in the road but most of the time it’s a quick snuggle then back to bed. We’ve had to do some arranging though.

We had the monitor in with Kitkat, but it really didn’t alert me to her movements so I moved it back to Samantha’s room, since she was sleeping better with the door closed so that let me hear her better. Kitkat comes into our room when she wakes up so it’s all good.

Everyone is sleeping so much better, even to the point of Kitkat going to bed with out being told to. She asks for a bottle, wants a movie in, and to be wrapped up in her blankie and then she usually falls asleep. She is even taking naps in her bed. Not regularly but still her naps are no longer on the couch or bean bag.

This was a really good move, my only regret is that we did not do it sooner. We need curtains for the window they’ve peelled the tint off the top most window that they can reach, thankfully no one can look in that window unless they are in the tree outside. When there is extra cash we’ll get some curtains to hang for her. I’m much happier, getting more sleep and so is she.

I like mashed potatoes. I use to hate homemade mashed potatoes because I hate lumps in my potatoes. Just can’t stand it. I know it’s all potatoe but still.

I’ve found a fool proof way for me to get no lumps in my mashed potatoes. It’s called the food processor. I love it. They turn out great and have very little lumps in them. I can deal with an occasional lump. But the flavor and testure are so much better than instant potatoes.

I’ve made them twice now and I am in love hehe. Shea loves them too. The girls not so much, Sammi will eat them but they prefer potatoes you can pick up with your fingers.

Last night I noticed my PC was doing something, little lights blinking and all, so I shut it down, it took to long, fearful of a hacker I turned it off manually. BIG NO NO! Today I turned it on and couldn’t start it even in safe mode. Great! I rumaged for start up disks couldn’t find mine, but had the laptops, they were same edition windows so I used that, it worked!

Unfortunately I lost all my files. Thankfully all my photos are safely on a disk and at my parents house. I’m glad I did that when I did I lost no photos whatsoever! I lost tons of work and stock photos and brushes etc but the good thing is I start clean for Warhammer when it goes live. No background processes that aren’t installed by default. Until I install my software anyway. But hopefully I can keep alot of that down to minimum working standards. Which is generally all I start with anyway. Though I won’t have nearly as many games and I’ll have to try syncing my Zune for my music but other than that no big loss everything is all safe and sound except business files, which really aren’t that huge of a loss. I have most of it on a server already. I don’t have source files and I think this will teach me to make client cds but we’ll see. I didn’t last time I lost data.

Anyway now I’m reformatting, reinstalling and taking care of my PC. Thankful we have a second pc on the net. I may have to get the laptop out later to do other stuff while I sit at my desk but we’ll see. Shea’s PC works just fine.